The hard boundary at work is “no chips”. I have extended it to home. Twice this afternoon I have approached the bag of tortilla chips beside the fridge and reversed course when my mind said “hard boundaries”.
I wrote this to remember two victories today.
To take action.
Today.
I have been faltering because I wanted to know what I was going to do before I began. What am I going to write about before I write? Figure out what I think before I start. Am I really committed to this? What if it fails? What is the opportunity cost of this activity instead of all of the other possibilities arrayed before me?
I know the goal. I know the people who will (God willing) find my offering useful. I know that people who follow the path I will lay out will be stronger, happier people, and their communities and families will be better off because people followed that path.
I know that these actions will help me, whether ultimately successful, unsuccessful, or (the worst outcome) somewhere in the middle. I will learn something and make myself more resilient, win, lose, or draw.
No. I start today.
Learn what to speak about by saying the wrong thing, or being inarticulate.
Learn what to do by doing the wrong things.
It has been decided.
It’s hard, in the moment, to know why you’re pissed off. The more important thing is to stop being pissed off, because that state of mind is of no value.
But it’s easier said than done to go from mental uproar to tranquility just because you want to. I haven’t accomplished that skill yet, and I doubt I will ever get there.
The “why” question is usually fruitless, but here it can be useful. If you have convinced yourself of the Stoic perspective (within your control, outside of your control), build on that foundation to allow yourself to let go of the inner uproar.
Ask yourself why you’re angry, annoyed, etc.
If you identify an event outside of your control, then you have persuaded yourself and it’s easier to let go and return to equilibrium. You have already accepted the truth of the control/no control principle.
Epictetus, as usual:
Practise, then, from the very beginning to say to every disagreeable impression, ‘You’re an impression and not at all what you appear to be.’ Then examine it and test it by these rules that you possess, and first and foremost by this one, whether the impression relates to those things that are within our power, or those that aren’t within our power; and if it relates to anything that isn’t within our power, be ready to reply, ‘That’s nothing to me.’
Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1.5
I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s not. I’m not saying it’s instantaneous in effect. It’s not. My mind wants to chew on thoughts like a puppy gnaws on a bone.
Do it anyway. Use the realization that this is an “outside of your control” matter (the answer to “Why?”) as the trigger. Pull away from the disagreeable impressions, even if you have to pull away again, again, again, and again, for days or weeks on end.
Actually, I should revise my judgment of “not easy”.
It is easy to do. Listen to DJ Boring’s Winona. The track samples from an interview.
Winona Ryder is interviewed and says “It is difficult to be judged.” (Sample at 4:15). (Judgment by others is outside our control). She gives a brief vignette to illustrate how she was judged, erroneously as it turned out.
She also says “I can’t answer the real question. All I can tell you is it’s easy.” (Sample at 3:17). And that is truth. I can’t answer the real question, even though it’s my own question. I will be uncovering new questions until I die. All of the questions are as real as the previous one and the next.
All I can say, based on experience, is that it’s easy.
I can do. That’s easy. Let go as if you’re a maple tree releasing a single autumn leaf, and draw deeply from your roots for sustenance.
The hard part is to keep doing.
Added to the blocklist on Freedom.
Every day at lunch my brain tells me to walk to Yogurtland and get a treat. I deserve it, or just this once, or it’s ok there isn’t much sugar or calories. I tell myself a story and I believe it.
Every day my brain says “hard boundaries”.
It happened again today. I had reflexively started walking south and started with the familiar dialog. After 50 yards of walking and talking to myself, I turned around and headed back north, toward work. Got a black coffee instead.
Win.
Hard boundaries.
If you take offense at someone’s manner or words (“Oh, he was so rude to me”) just consider the possibility that he is not being rude.
He’s being real. It’s your sensitivity that is the problem, not the way in which the message is delivered.
Kindness and thoughtfulness are virtues. Truthfulness. That’s your side of the street.
The people on the other side of the street? The ones who take offense, especially those who take offense on behalf of others? Fuck ‘em. They are lost and it’s not your job to change them—unless they prove to be Seekers.
It’s not in your power to change someone, in any event. Just do what is within your control.
And you know how to filter the Seekers from the Aimless. They reveal themselves.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4
The Psalm came to mind this morning over coffee.
Some people seemingly have never had a seriously hard time in live, where everything collapsed around them. Serious health, family, financial problems. Whatever.
I have had my share. Things where, if I told them “Yeah, that happened” would take note. There is no need to mention the events because the spiritual lessons learned matter, not the events.
A walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is what, I believes, separates the wheat from the chaff. Yes, more Biblical references. Taleb would say someone who goes through hard times will, by surviving, be antifragile. Or have the possibility of being antifragile, at least. Some might turn turtle and hunker down fearfully for the rest of their lives.
There is a self-reliant power that comes from such an experience. You know what is within your power and what is not in a visceral way. I didn’t have the words to express this until decades later when I found the Stoics. But you know. I remember being told, when fearful and lost, to put in a day’s work, then stop. You’ve done your job, now tend to the other essentials. Or another time, hearing the brilliance of the advice “stay home and get well, that’s your job today” when I had the flu and thought I should go to work but felt miserable. These were just side lessons in a larger, longer episode in the Valley. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
When you have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death you truly fear no evil. You don’t welcome it, you don’t want it, but you don’t fear it.
And when things become easy again (and they will) you bring that inner resilience with you.
Yesterday I brought the power of that inner resilience to bear on a difficult, time-sensitive problem. Not life-threatening, just money. 6 am to 10 pm. Bam. Done.
I thin the fact that I can dial into the inner resilience gives me something that others don’t have. I’m not saying that you can’t develop the power of that inner resilience in other ways. But I do think that you have to be forged with tests that take you to the limits of your ability to persevere. And live.
My grandfather said as much. He lived through the trenches of WW 1 and losing the farm in the Depression.
The first rule of life is don’t die. After that, it’s keep going. In my own Valley of the Shadow of Death experiences I had people around me. They could not live my life or go through the experience, but they supported me. Fear no evil. They were with me.
And now, with inner resilience, God is still with me. I still need human help, but the absolute knowledge that I can survive and be OK at the end of a big problem is a gift from God.
Epictetus would correct me and say it’s not a problem. That’s my opinion, subject to my control. Time to reframe my view of the events.
As usual, Epictetus nails it.
Smart fellows they are, he said, who pride themselves on those things that are not within our power. ‘I’m better than you,’ one says, ‘because I own plenty of land while you’re half-dead with hunger.’ Another says, ‘I’m of consular rank,’ and another, ‘I’m a procurator,’ and another, ‘I have good thick hair.’ And yet one horse doesn’t say to another, ‘I’m better than you because I have plenty of fodder, and plenty of barley, and bridles of gold, and richly worked saddles,’ but rather it says, ‘I can run faster than you.’ And every creature is better or worse in so far as it is made so by its own specific virtue or vice. Can it be, then, that man is the only creature to have no specific virtue, so that he has to look instead to his hair, and his clothes, and his forebears?
Epictetus, Fragments, 18
It’s easy to see others doing this. Watch for it in yourself.
That last sentence cuts deeply:
Can it be, then, that man is the only creature to have no specific virtue, so that he has to look instead to his hair, and his clothes, and his forebears?
Stand on your own virtue, on things within your control. On the inside man.
Looking at my posts here is a bit weird. I see myself as someone who writes well and explains things simply.
Not so much.
It’s time to get simple.
I found myself wrestling with WordPress again. Why would a new site on shared hosting not allow me to upload a blog post from the WordPress app on my phone or iPad?
Realization. There I go again.
Trouble ticket submitted. “Please cancel and refund.”
In the olden days, I would wrestle and conquer. Now I’d rather go to bed. I surrender. The machines win again.
Solve it with money. I will keep writing content and buy hosting that costs more than $1.50/month.
Looking back at the whole thing, buying cheap may have been my problem.
In my control, not in my control. Know the difference.